Ren ‘Juicy Juice’ Gazar is a leader of CosWave cosplay team, judge of the cosplay contest, and speaker of WEGAME 3.0 open lectures. Ren confessed that it was his first presentation since university studies. Nevertheless, he managed to reveal the topic perfectly and get all the truth of country’s cosplay realities across the audience. We would like to offer you a brief review of speaker’s lecture with the key points of his presentation.

What does cosplay mean?

“Cosplay. How I have sunk to it and where I keep sinking,” is a subtitle of Ren Gazar’s presentation, clearly determining attitude of the whole lecture. The speaker did not eulogize his hobby, as often happened, but rather shared his personal experience and raised relevant issues, offering practical solutions.

Instead of Wikipedia descriptions, he tried to define the cosplay on his own. According to Ren, its major components are the following:

similarity with a character in terms of appearance and temper (“You are the main cosplay component,” Juicy Juice stressed);

high-quality costume;

convincing performance of a character.

In some way, the cosplay can be referred to imitating of something you like with further demonstration to the broad audience. When certain activity attracts you, you want to join it and share your engagement with surrounding people, which is quite obvious.

Cosplay difficulties

Beginning cosplayers face a lot of various challenges. The speaker shared his first experience in creating a proper costume. A professional sewer made the main work, but he prepared some details, as well. So, Ren used pins to fasten a chenille cord with the costume on the neck, but it was far cry from the best solution. “I was handsome but so hurting,” he commented on. Juicy Juice recommended to focus on comfort of costumes.

It is costumes taking much space that Ren refers to negative aspects of his hobby. They are difficult to store and to sell. Moreover, ordering or sewing a good cosplay costume is pretty expensive, and craft can be even more cost-based. “Why do I attend fests in such clothes? Indeed, I could buy common clothes or take some food for this money,” the head of CosWave team put a joky question to himself.

“Cosplay requires great efforts and time,” the speaker said, stressing that each work should be appreciated. Not just did Ren complain of cosplay difficulties, but he prepared real tips and started implementing a project able to change the situation in a quality manner.

How to earn on cosplay?

Cosplay streams for Twitch and video shooting for YouTube are quite popular but, unfortunately, not efficient enough to earn on your hobby in Ukraine. Nevertheless, it is not the reason to refuse such an activity if you really like it, but there are also other options.

Ren offers to turn attending of festivals and cosplay events into earnings. Such practice is common abroad. There are also many organizers in Ukraine who invite cosplayers to their events, offering payment or free tickets. Unfortunately, this country does not have a well-defined structure that would simplify the interaction between parties.

Ren offered the efficient solution for event organizers and corporate exhibitors aimed at inviting cosplayers to their stands, as well as for cosplayers who want to earn on their hobby. One is preparing a special platform that will allow them to find each other with no trouble and agree on mutually beneficial terms. Along with another popular cosplayer, Maria ‘Fenix Fatalist’ Karpenko, he is going to create a social media group in the near future, allowing to implement this concept.

Do you want to find out who have won in main categories of WEGAM E 3.0 cosplay contest? Then follow the link.